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Thursday, June 2, 2011

How do you fight against I6 Halberds?

Email in: How do you fight against I6 Halberds?

If they're on Purifiers, the answer should be quite simple: Shoot them to shit. Forcing enough wounds is enough to kill Purifiers so I suggest focus firing on them as much as possible. Everything that kills normal marines kills Purifiers just fine. You do not want to get into combat with these guys with normal marines, no way. Even BA elites lose when charging into Purifiers with Halberds because everyone's swinging before you and killing marines with each wound. That's after you take your Cleansing Flame wounds.

So what do I shoot them with? Marines hate plasma, in every sense of the word. S7 AP2 wounds and kills every type of marine on 2s and the options to get them can be plentiful. Walkers can take a Plasma Cannon, Dev Squads or Long Fangs can take Plasma Cannons, Honor Guard can take 4x Plasmsa Guns, Wolf Guard can take combi-plasmas up the ying-yang and Sternguard can take both.

What if he takes Terminators with Halberds? GKT can have up to 3 attacks each with the BBanner and 2+ armor makes them pretty resilient against wound saturation from normal means. However, 2+ armor is still prone on getting its ass beat by plasma shots. Normal shots also work, but you have to shoot the living crap out of them (most likely with your entire army) in order to force enough failed armor saves.

But, but, Paladins don't die from anything! This is true, to an extent. If the Paladin squad has as Apothecary, they're not going to take damage from anything save for plasma shots and meltagun shots. Forcing wounds with S8 can be a lot harder than you think considering the amount of anti-tank firepower coming from a balanced list. The only way to reliably kill Paladins is by a huge number of meltagun or lascannon shots. If they're in cover with Shrouding up, good luck with that. At that point, it's better to take the fight to them in the most extreme of ways, the nitty gritty of close combat.

GK Paladins can be absolutely horrendous to deal with in close combat. If the squad has a Grand Master, you're going to be in for one hell of a fight. Rad Grenades makes you T3, Hammerhand makes him S5 and you do the math. Psychotroke can be hit or miss, but its effects always happen so you know for sure you're in a world of suck. Blind Grenades also reduce the number of attacks you're going to get so be prepared to suck it up and attack with EVERYTHING you've got. The best way to deal with Paladins is by massive combined arms. That means your entire army moves, shoots and assaults the same target (the Paladin unit). If you absolutely have to kill the unit, here's what you do:

Step #1 - Bait them out of cover. Run away, flee, hide, tank shock, do something that forces them to leave the sanctuary of cover and you will have a better chance at killing him. The reason for this is that you need to shoot them with as many high-power, low-ap weapons as you can without him taking any cover saves.

Step #2 - You need to shoot him with everything. Every bit of anti-armor firepower and every bolter should be aimed at the Paladins that are out of cover.

Step #3 - You need to assault him with everything at the same time. Get as many models into the fight as possible and deliver as many fists as possible. The more Fists you can deliver into the fight, the higher your chances at winning. Get as many models in base to base with Paladins as possible so you force him to swing at different squads. If you throw in one unit at a time, you are simply wasting points as the Paladins will probably slaughter you to the man.

What kind of changes have I made to my lists? My WGT now take a crap ton of combi-plasmas and I've replced my Long Fangs with AC/LC Predators. My BA already shoots a crap ton more than my SW, so I've made no changes to my 3/3 Baal-AC/LC Pred config. With 9 Meltashots and Mephiston, I should be able to tear some shit up without dying too horribly. And my DE, well, they've always been as good as they're going to get when it comes to destroying smaller elite armies.